Hou You-yi (侯友宜) must resign as New Taipei City mayor to focus on his campaign for president, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members said yesterday after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) picked him as its presidential candidate.
Hou is abandoning his job as mayor, DPP New Taipei City councilors said.
“We don’t need a part-time mayor,” New Taipei City DPP caucus director Cho Kuang-ting (卓冠廷) said. “Hou should resign as mayor right now. His heart and mind are focused on campaigning for the presidency, and not on the affairs of the city government.”
Photo: CNA
DPP New Taipei City Councilor Cheng Yu-en (鄭宇恩) called Hou’s performance as mayor over the past few months “pretentious, like an overly dramatic actor” while his focus was on the KMT primary.
He was vigorously working behind the scenes to lobby and influence the KMT’s top echelon to secure his nomination, Cheng said.
“Now Hou has an excuse to fully immerse himself in campaigning, but he is leaving an awful mess in New Taipei City,” she said. “The problems will get worse, as Hou plans to take leave to campaign, creating a void in the mayor’s office.”
“City residents cannot accept an absentee mayor abandoning the people who voted him in,” she added.
“Hou has placed his personal and political ambitions above his duty as mayor,” DPP New Taipei City Councilor Ivy Chang (張維倩) said.
“In the past few months, the city council has had to make changes to meeting agendas to accommodate Hou’s campaigning,” Chang said. “With the complicity of KMT members, the council has become an appendage of Hou’s presidential campaign office.”
New Taipei City has had an uptick in crime in the past few months, including discharges of illegal firearms, a bridge collapse and a tragic instance of negligence and failure by local welfare agencies, when in February an elderly man with dementia was found with the bodies of three family members in Zhonghe District (中和), she said.
“Hou and his city government still have not apologized over these incidents, which have made many residents fearful about public safety,” she said.
DPP members asked Hou not to run away, but now he has, Chang said.
“The people of New Taipei City are saying: ‘Hou, you can leave to campaign with the KMT, but we do not want you back as mayor,’” Chang said.
New Taipei City Councilor Ho Po-wen (何博文), director of the party’s New Taipei City chapter, also said that Hou should resign as mayor.
“If he does not, he would need to take leave for eight months,” Ho said. “How could that be done? What are the legal procedures?”
“If Hou can take eight months of leave, can every civil servant and elected representative do the same?” he said.
“Hou has treated the people of New Taipei City as doormats, trampling on them and abusing their rights by running away from his governance duties,” Ho said.
“Will he resign now or when he gets defeated in the presidential election?” he asked. “Will he be shameless enough to return to the city and pick up the mayoral reins after abandoning them for so long?”
Separately, people demanding independence protested outside KMT headquarters as the party was nominating Hou, accusing it of colluding with China.
Taiwan Republic Office director Chilly Chen (陳峻涵) led protesters holding signs that accused the KMT of “colluding with the Chinese Communist Party [CCP].”
“KMT officials want Taiwanese to accede to the CCP’s demands, including following its ‘one China’ principle, its ‘one country, two systems’ model and negotiating a peace agreement,” Chen said.
“Such steps would turn Taiwan Strait issues into domestic Chinese affairs,” he said.
“If China were to start a war against Taiwan, the international community would be unable to help,” he said, adding that “the consequences would be dire.”
“We are entering a crucial time,” Chen said. “Everyone in Taiwan must rally as one, to fight and safeguard the homeland.”
“People must make the right choice in next year’s presidential and legislative elections,” he said. “We must stop the pro-China KMT from bringing in the CCP to rule over us, which would turn Taiwan into a vast graveyard.”
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